I work much more like a forensic
photographer in a certain way, collecting evidence. I've started to take
more still lifes, like a police photographer, collecting evidence as a
witness. I've started to borrow a different strategy than that of the
classic photojournalist. The work is much more factual and much less about
good photography. I don't care that much anymore about "good photography."
I'm gathering evidence for history, so that we remember.

 Gilles Peress, U.S. News, October 6, 1997

1
of 11

2
of 11

Desigining
Telex Iran

TELEXES

In 1979 and 1980, the American
Embassy in Teheran, Iran was seized by Islamic fundamentalists and 52
people were held hostage. Gilles Peress traveled Iran for five weeks during
the hostage crisis, taking pictures to understand a country
and a people who were portrayed in the United States media as fanatics
jumping out of the television screen, knife between their teeth, red eyes
demanding justice. (Editors, Telex Iran, 1983)

This photo shows the confusion. The composition is neatly divided into
four equal parts. Figures move in and out of the four squares and back
and forth creating dizzy shifts in scale. Equally unsettling is the tilted
horizon and the head in the lower foreground whose chin, lopped off by
the camera, seems to reappear in a sign overhead. Cornell Capa, a fellow
photographer and journalist, wrote that Peress photos of Iran were
brilliant visual nervousness aspirins will not help.
(Cornell Capa, Telex Iran, 1983)

This photo was the cover image for a book Peress assembled of his Iran
pictures titled Telex Iran. Peress put the pictures in a sequence
that made the most sense to him, included text that didnt detract
from the pictures, and designed the overall look and feel of the book.
Instead of captions, the pictures are punctuated by telexes that make
up a parallel story of communications to and from Peress (in Iran) with
lab technicians and his Magnum photography agency offices in New York
and Paris.

2
of 11

3
of 11

Where
is Iran?

Peresss
photographs are the puzzled, chaotic articulations of a self-avowed
outsider looking for explanations in areas where other journalists,
confined for months to their on-the-spot positions in front of the
American Embassy, were unable to go. In this context the photographs
are asserted as questions rather than answers, a strategy in keeping
with a growing disbelief that it is possible to present conclusions
without involving the reader in the photographers attempt
to understand. The revelation of the image is located in the telling
not just in the evidence of what has been told.

Fred Ritchin,
In Our Time the World as Seen by Magnum Photographers, 1989

All of these women seem completely
unaware that there is a gunman in their midst, or are they so used to
guns they are not alarmed? The stairway where the gunman is stationed
looks like a space reserved just for him, isolated in the center of dark,
repeated shapes of the women on the left, and dark, deep space of the
hallway on the right.

According to the editors of Gilles Peress book on Iran, photographs
like these do little to describe another people and place, but go
a long way toward measuring the distance separating perceptions and cultures.
(Editors, Telex Iran, 1983) In other words, rather than show you
another culture, they show you how far away you are from understanding
that culture.

3
of 11

4
of 11

Peress
and Peress

The fact that each person is looking
in different directions makes this claustrophobic street, packed with
people and vehicles, even more menacing. As viewers, we naturally follow
the gazes of the people in picture as they criss-cross through the scene.
The cloaked woman moving toward us in the center of the picture is the
only person looking at us, with only one eye.

In order to make this picture, Peress had to be able to see it happening
as the figures moved into these positions, get his camera up and on the
right settings, and choose the precise split-second to snap the picture.
In much of Peress work choosing the right picture really means choosing
the right moment to take the picture.

4
of 11

5
of 11

The
gestures these people make say volumes about their relationships to
each other and their roles in the Bosnian war.

My photographs
show a nation invaded, a nation at war. Refugees are on the road,
drifting through the rain, moving through camps and hospitals, an
endless cavalry of images flashing by in a blur: exhaustion, too
many images, too much horror. The witness becomes indifferent. My
point is that we, in the comfort of our lives, must question our
role in the history of Bosnia, which is also our history.


Gilles Peress

When Gilles Peress spent three
months in Bosnia in 1993, his aim was not to explain the war that was
happening there. Instead, he wrote, I set out only to provide a
visual continuum of experience, of existence. (Gilles Peress, Farewell
to Bosnia, 1994) This photograph provides a visual answer to the who,
what, and where questions of the journalist. The fallen victim of the
Bosnian conflict is apparently a civilian; her family or friends gather
on the left hand side of the picture. A Red Cross worker stoops toward
the victim; others grip guns. There are obviously military present as
well. The gestures these people make toward each other and the objects
in the picture, the guns, the handles of the stretcher that hold the victim,
say volumes about their relationships to each other and their roles in
the Bosnian war.

5
of 11

6
of 11

Comparing
Contexts

Magnum

Gilles Peress surveys a Bosnian
city through a window pierced by a bullet. The angle of the camera tilts
the horizon slightly so the two towering buildings seem off-balance. The
photograph conceals more than it shows and what it does show is not very
clear. This could be any city in the world, and the bullet hole could
be evidence of any disaster, from a family tragedy to a civil war. That,
perhaps, is the point.

Photojournalists like Peress know that publishing photographs in the
mass media can create confusion. Editors who have other points of view
and interests of their own can change the meaning of a photo with titles
or captions, cropping and placement of a picture in a publication. Consider
a photo of a famine victim next to an ad for a new Honda. The personality
of a publication can have an impact as well. Think about the same photo
appearing in Time and in Playboy. The selection process
itself can change the meaning of a photograph. Most photojournalists are
required to submit all the photos they have taken for an assignment so
an editor can choose. How can photojournalists maintain control of their
work? For Gilles Peress, the answer is the professional cooperative Magnum.
(To find out more about Magnum, click on the bar above.)

6
of 11

7
of 11

Where
is Bosnia?

I remembered
my father, his amputated arm and his pain, his descriptions of addiction
to morphine, of World War II, the German occupation and the concentration
camps. I began to think that I had come to Bosnia in part to see,
almost to relive visions buried in my childhood memories. Fathers
telling horror stories from the war. Mental images so horrific that
one is compelled to actually see them to deal with them.
And to see them, you have to act them out.

Gilles Peress, Farewell to Bosnia, 1994

This photograph shows people digging
a mass grave in Bosnia. Part of its horror is that it seems like an everyday
event conducted by rather ordinary people. Gilles Peress used his camera
in Bosnia to show how complicated war can be. The people in this photo
hardly look like monsters, and the grave site could be in a small-town
backyard in the American Midwest.

A camera can often serve as a shield as well as a witness to scenes
like this one. By placing a camera between us (and himself) and these
burial preparations, we all become removed from the actual experience.
Yet the photo is terrifying if you stop to ponder what came before and
after the moment in this picture. Were the people who were meant for this
grave alive or dead when this photo was taken? Peress doesnt give
us a clue.

7
of 11

8
of 11

Where
is Rwanda?

Artspeak

Ever
notice how the language of violence and the language of photography
sometimes overlap? A gun is loaded, and so is a camera. Shoot a
victim, shoot a picture. A gun is shot, and so is a roll of film.
New, auto-focus cameras are called point-and-shoot cameras by many
in the business. For those who are disturbed by such metaphors,
there are alternative ways to describe photography. A picture can
be taken and a photograph is made.

Gilles Peress traveled in Rwanda,
making pictures during a particulary grim war between two of the countrys
ethnic groups. In this photograph the realities of the conflict get almost
too close for comfort. Peress chose a point of view many photographers
might avoid. Most would move away from the figure in the center of the
frame in order to compose the picture, but Peress uses that figure to
create the composition. The other figures in the picture seem perched
on the center figures shoulders.

The tilted horizon line is a characteristic of many Peress pictures.
It lends movement to this scene, as if we are looking through a hand-held
movie camera as the photographer walks forward, following the main figure
into the frame.

8
of 11

9
of 11

Is
it photojournalism or is it art?

Good photographs depend on what is pictured, but it is equally
important is how the subject portrayed. Because of the way Gilles
Peress portrayed his subject in this photograph, a human river of refugees
takes on a quiet, timeless beauty. The real situation is certainly not
beautiful. It is Rwanda in 1994, where a bitter war between the Hutu and
Tutsi ethnic groups leaves hundreds of thousands dead and just as many
exiled and homeless.

The dusky atmosphere and the repeated shapes of the figures gently curving
off into infinity contribute to the feeling of quiet. The figure perched
in the tree overlooking the scene surveys the landscape, and becomes an
extension of the tree, human and tree limbs entwined together.

9
of 11

10
of 11

the
only hint of violence in this photograph is the woman's bandaged hand.

The woman in this photo raises
her pitcher, and the sky appears to flow in. It is Rwanda in 1994, and
a conflict between ethnic groups there will cost hundreds of thousands
of lives. But the only hint of violence in this photograph is the womans
bandaged hand. Photographer Gilles Peress exploits the fact that photographs
can often hide more than they show. We are so far removed from Rwanda
that we probably wouldnt even identify this woman with that area
of Africa. Perhaps that is part of his message.

Peress used the sky as a field of light in the photograph, a background
for the womans face. In fact, the light comes from somewhere behind
the woman to create a glowing profile. The diagonal shape in the upper
left corner (echoing the shape of her head scarf), the horizontal string
of buildings at her shoulders, and the vertical pole in front of her face
complete a frame around her head.

10
of 11

11
of 11

For more about Gilles Peress:

Gilles
Peress, Telex Iran: In the Name of Revolution, Millerton, NY:
Aperture, 1983

A large-format book that documents Peress travels during
five weeks in the midst of the 1980 Iranian hostage crisis. Accompanied by telexes
sent and received by Peress and the New York and Paris Magnum offices, as well
as an essay by Iranian writer Gholam Saedi.

Gilles
Peress, Farewell to Bosnia, New York: Scalo Publishers, 1994

More than eighty photographs made during three months in Bosnia in 1993. Peress
writes in the books introduction that he set out only to provide a
visual continuum of experience, existence, and not an explanation of the
events in Bosnia. Also includes a few letters to colleagues and a diary entry.

Gilles
Peress, The Silence, New York: Scalo Publishers, 1995

Photographs
of violence in the ethnic clash of Hutus and Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994. No explanation
seems possible for these very disturbing photos.

A site designed by Peress and featuring many of his Bosnia photos, including
those from a return trip after 1994. Also includes audio files of Peress talking
about his work on Bosnia and background information about the recent political
developments in Yugoslavia.

ArtsConnectEd is a collaboration between The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
and the Walker Art Center which provides online access to the rich collections
and reference, archive, media, and curriculum resources of both institutions.